Workforce - "Fit for the future"

We will

Develop and shape our Workforce to be ‘fit for the future’, strengthening health and wellbeing and ensuring that our people are equipped with the knowledge , skills and experience to continue building a safe, effective and resilient service to the people of Gloucestershire.

Why?

Our workforce profile predicts a high number of staff who are expected to retire in the coming years, which presents a significant risk to the Service in terms of loss of knowledge, skills and experience. We know that this will be felt most prevalently amongst our operational workforce.

Robust succession planning will be crucial to ensure that we rise to these challenges in the future. With an anticipated relatively new workforce we must increase our training, development and support to staff at all levels. And, with a changing operational profile, we must find new ways of developing our staff’s operational exposure.
We know that people are our greatest asset and we must provide a clear vison with opportunity to grow.

The changes expected in our workforce profile also offers us an opportunity to improve and strengthen working practices and development pathways to shape our own future and ensure the Service we provide to public is the most effective and efficient as can be.

We also know that resilience is vital to ensure that we are always there for those that need us … every time they need us. We see supporting our people’s physical and mental wellbeing is just as important as training and developing them to carry out their roles. Continually improving our working environment will give us highly motivated, engaged and valued staff that can fulfil their full potential. It will also develop a workforce whose composition, capacity and competence can deliver best value for the people of Gloucestershire.

How?

• We will deliver the objective’s contained with the Service’s improvement plan
• By providing strong, values based leaders , who are trusted to the right thing and lead by example
• We will Strengthen our succession planning processes and match individuals potential to those needs
• We will be guided by professional standard to ensure the best quality of service
• We will improve our development process and pathways to give our staff the best opportunities possible to reach their potential
• We will increase, expand and improve our Learning and Development provisions to ensure we have the capacity, flexibility and resources to rise to the challenge of our future workforce
• We will evaluate implement the long term training solution for GFRS at the end of our contract with Severn Park Training centre
• Make full use of Apprenticeships to offer the highest level of training
• Develop peoples personal and professional skills and knowledge throughout their careers, providing ongoing support to help them achieve their full potential